INDORE: Here is a news to worry for Indoreans.

Growth is happening faster than we ever imagined. Construction is booming and expansion is gobbling agricultural land

I travelled to two different cities in two different states last fortnight — Indore and Guwahati. I came back with images identified by common distinctions: piles of garbage and glitzy new shopping malls. Is this our vision of urban development? There is no question that cities are imploding; growth is happening faster than we ever imagined. Construction is booming and expansion is gobbling agricultural land.

The industrial clusters based in Greater Kochi fall into the group of cities with high pollution levels, as per a study done by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) in association with Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. The study had carried out an environmental assessment of industrial clusters across India, the results of which have been published online.

Under the study, a comprehensive environmental pollution index (CEPI) was calculated to help prioritise planning needs to improve the quality of the environment in industrial clusters.

The Farmers’ Welfare & Agriculture Development Department has set a target to distribute soil health cards to all the farmers of Madhya Pradesh.

The Central Government has directed Reliance Industries Ltd. (RIL) to sign gas sales and purchase agreement (GSPA) with NTPC and 10 other city gas distribution (CGD) companies to supply gas from the KG-D6 fields.

Recently, Communist Party of India (Marxist) Rajya Sabha member Tapan Sen had, in a letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, pointed out to interventions and action of the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) to help private gas and power producers while ignoring the interests of its own PSUs.

In a case of illegal drug trial, a man from Indore “discovered” through local newspapers that he was an uninformed guinea-pig for a German drug firm. The newspapers reported the matter after it was raised in the Madhya Pradesh Assembly.

Dhananjay Shrivastava did not know trials of Olodaterol — a drug for respiratory ailments — were conducted on him, till his name figured on the list of 1,112 victims of illegal drug trials made public by the Assembly in response to a question from MLA Bala Bachchan on March 1.

The alleged illegal clinical trials of untested drugs by pharmaceutical firms in the country, has come under the judicial scrutiny with the Supreme Court seeking the Centre's stand on a plea for an independent probe into it.

A bench of justices R.M. Lodha and H.L. Gokhale issued notices to the Centre, the Union Health ministry and the Medical Council of India seeking their replies on a Public Interest Litigation alleging that the country is being used for illegal clinical trials by multinational pharmaceutical firms because laxities in implementing laws here.